Hi Alex,
I just tried and it worked for me, I noticed we had the wrong version on the page, so here are the steps I took:
$ cd lift-lift_26_sbt-3c4742e/
$ ll
total 8
-rw-rw-r--. 1 diego diego 2111 Jan 14 09:04 README.md
drwxrwxr-x. 7 diego diego 4096 Jan 14 09:04 scala_211
$ cd scala_211/
/home/diego/Downloads/lift-lift_26_sbt-3c4742e/scala_211
[diego@Toshiba scala_211]$ ll
total 24
drwxrwxr-x. 4 diego diego 4096 Jan 14 09:04 lift_advanced_bs3
drwxrwxr-x. 4 diego diego 4096 Jan 14 09:04 lift_basic
drwxrwxr-x. 4 diego diego 4096 Jan 14 09:04 lift_blank
drwxrwxr-x. 4 diego diego 4096 Jan 14 09:04 lift_json
drwxrwxr-x. 4 diego diego 4096 Jan 14 09:04 lift_mvc
-rw-rw-r--. 1 diego diego 897 Jan 14 09:04 README.md
$ cd lift_basic/
/home/diego/Downloads/lift-lift_26_sbt-3c4742e/scala_211/lift_basic
$ ./sbt
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM warning: ignoring option MaxPermSize=512m; support was removed in 8.0
[info] Loading global plugins from /home/diego/.sbt/0.13/plugins
[info] Updating {file:/home/diego/.sbt/0.13/plugins/}global-plugins...
....
I downloaded half the internet here
.....
[info] [SUCCESSFUL ] jline#jline;2.12.1!jline.jar (372ms)
[info] Done updating.
>
what are the exact steps you are taking?
And even though it didn't work at first, sbt is the easiest way to get started, we'll guide you more until you get there.
Thanks!
Diego